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The data and information presented in this web site are presented in good faith and believed to be accurate. Any and all liability for the content or any omissions including any inaccuracies, errors, or misstatements in such data or information is expressly disclaimed. The web site is compiled for the sole purpose of informing community members of resources and information pertaining to Lyme Borreliosis Disease and its coinfections.
The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation, Directors and members are not liable for any direct or indirect damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of information available from this website.
Consult a qualified Lyme ( Borreliosis ) Disease literate doctor for medical advice if Lyme Disease is suspect.
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Hearing Reflects Divide On Lyme Disease
By GARRET CONDON
Courant Staff Writer
January 30 2004
A Manchester cardiologist who spoke at a daylong public hearing on Lyme
disease Thursday summarized the common ground held by nearly everyone who
has studied or been touched by the unofficial state disease.
"I think there is an enormous amount of human suffering with this disease on
the planet," said Dr. Stephen Sinatra, an author and well-known proponent of
alternative medicine, who revealed he is treating himself and his dogs for
Lyme.
The exact extent of the suffering due to Lyme has been a decades-long battle
pitting patient advocacy groups and sympathetic doctors against the
mainstream medical community.
Some Lyme patients and physicians feel that Lyme disease - especially the
chronic, long-term variety - is under-diagnosed and inadequately treated by
the short course of oral antibiotics that is the current standard.
Other physicians, researchers and policy-makers believe that chronic Lyme is
not widespread and they worry that doctors who are too eager to treat Lyme
may be overloading patients with unnecessary and dangerous doses of
antibiotics and also ignoring other possible illnesses.
That divide was in evidence at the hearing convened by Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal and the state Department of Public Health. Dr. J. Robert
Galvin, the new state health commissioner, said the purpose of the hearing
was to improve understanding of Lyme disease and help lead to more effective
diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
The patient panel - and the overflow audience at the Legislative Office
Building in Hartford - was dominated by people who believe Lyme is
under-counted and under-treated.
One panelist, Josh Athenios, 12, of Farmington, told of his descent into
crippling pain and of an infectious disease doctor who told him to "tell my
mom that I was making it up" to get out of going to school.
Caroline Baisley, director of the Greenwich Health Department, spoke as a
patient and described a catalog of symptoms - from hives and hearing loss to
chest pain - which were not relieved until she was treated for Lyme. Others
spoke of children whose grades plummeted and of miscarriages linked to Lyme.
But when the physicians' panel began, Dr. Lawrence Zemel, chief of pediatric
rheumatology at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, said that a small
group of doctors is diagnosing Lyme disease too often in patients who test
negative for Lyme and have vague complaints of fatigue and pain. He
described one young patient whose parents insisted that the child be treated
for Lyme after complaining of severe back and hip pain. The antibiotics
failed, Zemel said, and he determined that the child had leukemia.
Dr. Robert Levitz, assistant director of the section of infectious disease
at Hartford Hospital, said that he too had seen some patients misdiagnosed
with Lyme, but he also faulted some of his colleagues. Levitz said patients
need to be thoroughly worked up to get to the bottom of their symptoms,
whether it turns out to be Lyme or not.
Dr. Steven Phillips of Ridgefield made the case that long-term Lyme is a
continuing infection by the Lyme-causing bacterium. Another theory is that
it is an autoimmune disorder triggered by an initial infection that has
ended.
Some in the Lyme disease community have charged that doctors fail to
diagnose Lyme disease because they use an overly conservative definition of
the disease that was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention for collecting data on the illness, not for diagnostic purposes.
Dr. Paul Mead, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC, reassured those
assembled that the CDC surveillance case definition, as it is called, "is
not a substitute for sound clinical judgment."
Also contentious is the state's decision to discontinue a five-year practice
of requiring laboratories to report positive Lyme tests. Physicians still
are required to submit reports of diagnosed Lyme cases. Dr. James Hadler,
director of infectious diseases at the state health department, said the
state has other means of surveillance.
Copyright 2004, Hartford Courant
http://www.ctnow.com/news/health/hc-lyme0130.artjan30,1,1352175.story?coll=hc-headlines-health
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